The present invention relates to a management technology of a storage device, particularly to a technology of managing creation and deletion of a partition of a hard disk device.
In a storage device, particularly in a hard disk, the setting of partitions makes it possible to physically use one hard disk as if it were separate hard disks. It is therefore an actual practice to divide a hard disk having a large capacity into a plurality of partitions, for facilitating management of the disk or enabling the booting up of a plurality of OSs by switching one OS to another. Further, the partitions are also used for the purpose of preventing a decrease in a processing speed, which is caused by an occurrence of so-called fragmentation. To this end, files to be frequently opened for reading and writing, and system files and the like to be altered to a less degree are recorded in separate partitions.
When a user conducts partition alteration, conventionally, the user employs a utility program or the like to manually add or delete partitions . That is, when the user adds a partition, the user takes account of a necessary partition size and a securable region on a hard disk to determine the position of partition to be created.
In practice, however, partition alteration has not been performed very frequently. The alteration has been limited, for example, to the case of adding a hard disk, the case of changing operation systems, and the like.
However, there are demands for adding and deleting a partition for enlargement of a hard disk capacity, diversification of operation systems, addressing a necessity to handle files having various properties.
In such a case, if the addition and deletion of the partitions are repeated in a disorderly way, the hard disk is fragmented into minute partitions, which may lower the utilization efficiency of a hard disk device.